


The Fine Art of Falling Apart

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2019-03-16 21:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13645137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: She has been alive for two summers.





	The Fine Art of Falling Apart

She has been alive for two summers, and Dawn has spent both of them the same way--long afternoons by a fresh grave, tears and sweat running down her face, her arms wrapped around knees sticking up, too skinny and too bony, from below her shorts.  
  
It's easier this year than last; Buffy spent too much time ignoring her last year, and now she doesn't know how to ask Dawn where she goes during the day, or why, and half the time she's at work, anyway. Last year, Dawn lied and made excuses and got Janice to cover for her, time and again, because she just wanted to be left  _alone_ , just for a little while; but this year, she thinks that if Buffy asked, she might even be able to tell her the truth, for once.  
  
She's in summer school this year, because she screwed up so badly last year, and nobody could ever accept  _my sister came back from the dead_  as an excuse; the afternoons, though, belong to the cemetery. She sits with Tara on Mondays and Wednesday, her mother on Tuesdays and Thursdays; on Fridays she stays at school after her class is over, because they--the school, the social workers, no one who knows anything--want her to see a counselor. She sits in a warm, airless office with her hands folded on her lap, mutely daring the woman to say she understands what Dawn is going through.  
  
Afterward, Xander picks her up and buys her lunch, and sometimes he brings her back to the site and lets her sit in the office trailer reading magazines, instead of making her go home. She's had worse days.  
  
Buffy works late on Friday nights, always, so Friday night it's just her and Xander for dinner; Dawn invents recipes for pasta sauce and casseroles, and Xander chokes them down without complaining, except for the time she decided to experiment with marshmallows and carrots. How was she supposed to know it's just sweet potatoes that works with, she wonders; she's only two years old.  
  
She doesn't say that, though; Xander doesn't like being reminded that Dawn isn't normal.  
  
Nobody likes it, but it doesn't make it any less true.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
If she had been a normal person--she's at least sure now that she's  _real_  even if she isn't  _normal_ \--then the summer when she was  _actually_  two years old, she would have gone camping with her parents and her sister. There are pictures of it; she's wearing a diaper, a floppy sun hat, and a giant grin. Buffy's nose is peeling from sunburn, and her parents' arms are around one another's waists. They are all smiling. They are all safe. They are all happy.  
  
Hank stopped calling around the time that Dawn's sure her memories are real. She wonders if it's the monks' fault, if they gave him memories of not caring about his daughters, to keep him away from her, or if he just decided it was too much work to be a dad. At least, she thinks, she can't really blame herself for that; she never even  _met_  the guy, not really. She guesses it doesn't matter all that much.  
  
She looks at the pictures and lets herself pretend that the memories are real, that summers used to be happy.  
  


***

  
  
  
Xander's there a lot, and Dawn doesn't ask him if it's because he doesn't have anywhere else to go. It's kind of true, after all, and it might make him stop coming around.  
  
When Buffy has the night off, they all eat dinner together, and then Dawn does her homework--not much, because summer school is easier than real school--and they watch TV and then Buffy goes out to patrol. Sometimes before she leaves, she hands Dawn a stake and they practice; after last spring, Buffy's suddenly willing to teach Dawn how to protect herself.  
  
Sometimes Xander falls asleep on the couch, and then there's scrambled eggs for breakfast--not pancakes; Dawn thinks she will never be able to eat pancakes again--and they sit around the table and drink juice and squabble over the last piece of toast and it feels like they're a family.  
  
She's glad Buffy doesn't have the night off very often.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Two summers ago, Dawn may or may not have been real; she doesn't know when real starts and the fake memories end. She usually marks it from the day she found out what she was; that's the first memory she lets herself trust.  
  
But two summers ago, she and her mom and Buffy went on a picnic one afternoon, and her mom grilled hamburgers while she and Buffy squirted each other with water guns and acted like little kids; the only thing they were attacked by was a colony of ants.  
  
Eight months later, her mother was dead, and Dawn wasn't even all the way human.  
  


***

  
  
  
In the memories Dawn has, Xander used to have a crush on Buffy, obvious enough that Dawn could notice it, even with her limited exposure to Buffy's friends, back then. From the way Xander's always willing to drop everything and come over, Dawn wonders how much it's "used to" and how much is "now."  
  
If Buffy and Xander started dating--okay, it would be seriously freaky, considering Dawn's long-enough-term-that-some-of-it-was-real former crush on Xander, but that's not why it would be a disaster.  
  
If Buffy and Xander were together, then they really would be a family, and Dawn hopes that never, ever happens.  
  
She knows what happens to her families, always.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Last summer, when Buffy was dead, Willow and Tara moved into the house because Dawn couldn't be alone, even if she wanted to be.  
  
Dawn always adored Willow, who was smart and funny and always had time for her best friend's little sister, but Tara--Dawn doesn't even know how she felt, feels, about Tara. Tara was the one who sat on the couch for hours, brushing Dawn's hair until she relaxed enough to cry. Tara taught her how to make macaroni and cheese that wasn't from a box, and made breakfast for her, and tried to keep the house feeling like a home.  
  
More than anything, Dawn wanted her mother back, her sister back; but by the end of the summer she'd started understanding that would never happen. She and Willow and Tara were just going to have to be each other's family, and she'd decided to try, at least, to make the best of that.  
  
Now Tara's dead and Willow tried to end the world, and Dawn thinks maybe she should have loved them both just a little less.  
  


***

  
  
  
Summer's almost over; Dawn has new school clothes even though they can't afford them, because she keeps getting taller, like the giant freak she is. She got an A in English in summer school, and that night they had pizza and ice cream, and then watched DVDs Xander brought over after work.  
  
Buffy has the night off tonight; she's promised to take Dawn out on patrol, for real, and if they find a vampire, Buffy swears she'll let Dawn try to stake it herself.  
  
Dawn's looking forward to it. Summers are all about death.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
